Counseling & Progressive Discipline

At Westfield State University, most employees are members of unions and specific discipline procedures are addressed in the applicable collective bargaining agreement. The respective agreement should be reviewed by the supervisor prior to taking any disciplinary action against an employee.

The purpose of progressive discipline is to discourage employees from engaging in offensive or inappropriate conduct. Progressive discipline works by imposing increasingly more severe penalties on an employee each time a given offense is repeated.

Progressive discipline is not applicable in every instance where disciplinary action is warranted. Specifically, if an employee’s actions represent gross misconduct (such as violations of federal or state law, workplace violence, public intoxication, etc.), the employee may not be eligible for progressive discipline and will instead be subjected to more serious disciplinary action at the discretion of the supervisor, in consultation with the Office of Human Resources, Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity.